Journal

What marketing teams can learn from tech companies’ experimentation model

The concept of agile development was first introduced to me by a software developer. This was several years ago, before “minimal viable product” had made its way into the vernacular of those outside the tech-startup community. The developer explained to me the concept of racing toward the launch of your idea so that it could be tested, edited and developed in real time. At the time, my only understanding of how this process worked was receiving patches to Microsoft programs a few weeks after a program launched to fix the bugs. But the concept of not wasting all of your resources upfront resonated with me. As an entrepreneur who has tried a lot of things and had a lot of failures, this felt intuitive. We’ve had a lot of initiatives that didn’t go anywhere and actually not having all of the resources upfront made us demand an ROI that you don’t always find in the initiatives of big organizations. It also gives a direct voice to the people who are actually going to use the product, which gives them a sense of ownership in the end product. Now with digital, we can measure everything more effectively—from a new marketing campaign to a retail experience launch. As we move into a more agile business world, how does this affect the relationship between brands and marketing agencies?Here are a few articles that helped me grapple with this question:

The old way of building brands included rigorous amounts of consumer research and upfront planning. And while I am still a big advocate of doing your due diligence upfront, I encourage brands we work with to reserve enough resources to adjust their campaign, product or experience after feedback from the initial launch. It’s not just about making noise and having big ideas—the agile business world is about listening, responding and problem-solving.